A Wishlist Item: University of the People Behind the Wires

I recently relocated on the compound to a dorm wing that hosts incarcerated students of Ashland University's distance education program. The students here are issued laptops that are in physically poor health (Dell's venerable Latitude 3150 laptops, running some lightweight Linux distro, likely a LXDE-based or GNOME-based shell based on what one student showed me) -- several units have detached hinges, cracks in the plastics, etc.; all units have bright red dummy fillers in the places where the Ethernet and USB ports reside.
The operating system is so locked and stripped down that common keyboard shortcuts that one would use in a productivity suite like WPS Office, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice (students use LibreOffice, by the by), such as the ones for cut, copy, paste, bold, italicize, and underline are disabled or otherwise unavailable. Aside LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox (version unknown) is also present so that students can log in to their online courses (and nowhere else, likely thanks to the Grate Firewall of FDC).

This made me ponder. Come along for the ride!

Goal

Ideally, I want to make accessing schooling through University of the People a reality. Being priced out of Ashland University (at over $1,500 per class, self pay, and ineligible for Second Chance Pell Grants because my sentence is over 10 years at this time), an educational opportunity that is more affordable (even with help or possibly with a scholarship that focuses on students who really do not have the money but have the desire to learn) would be both smart to offer, and a form of Right Action.

Hardware

Seeing these black laptops, along with our vivid orange OuterBox cases for our tablets, shows that we can deviate away from
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in order to have a deliverable item. Clear Plastic actually seems to complicate pricing and delivery.
When I was last free, and we had less buffoonery in the form of these tariffs, I was able to purchase a laptop on Wish.com (of all places, I know, I know), produced by a company named CHUWI. It was actually not my first time buying CHUWI hardware -- I had purchased a 10" tablet computer which had two operating systems. I actually quite liked and used that machine, even after the screen's digitizer was cracked on an Amtrak ride back home after a vacation, so the laptop purchase was simple enough.

With that in mind, finding out the price of an ultralight notebook with no readily serviceable parts beyond, say, an m.2 SATA or NVMe storage device (in addition to some eMMC storage (insert my editor cringing here :D)) would be paramount. If we could get something with 4-8 GB of DDR4 memory, and a processor that is frugal on battery life while still offering enough performance to, say, watch a course video in glorious 720p (or better), that would be grand.

I had the CHUWI Herobook, which had an Intel Atom Z8350; it kept up with what I was throwing at it while attending online courses -- an eBook reader, a browser window, and a word processor. This was also around 5 years ago (goodness, time flies you). The machine cost me about $150 then -- you know, peak pandemic, "not much" was available, and yet...

So, if the machines in need can be located for under $350 each, I recognize that Security will (unnecessarily) demand hardening of the machine. No student accessible ports or slots, so the USB ports must be covered, Ethernet must be blocked (if present). Operating System needs to be secured in ways I've never thought of before. Assume an exorbitant $150 of labor and parts per machine (including 3D printing or otherwise manufacturing a filler for the blocked ports inside the unit).

I'd consider a fleet of off-lease machines from Dell, HP, or Lenovo unless someone is making a bespoke institutional use laptop for a cost lower than our acquisition and modification model (I can think of the Justice Tech Solutions Securebook machines as one such family of devices, cost unknown), but I also need to then provide controlled access to a network that can reach the content necessary to complete classes.

Networking

University of the People needs internet access so that students can read the ePubs, the occasionally linked website, and submit assignments written in a word processor of your choosing. A whitelisted set of domains would be recommended for said connection, with log monitoring to keep an eye on activity, watch for exploits, etc. We'd need a decent connection for 100 students to start -- this happens to be more than what's housed in my imaginary program, but overprovision to deliver has been my mindset for a long time.

A student AUP, agreeing to responsible use of the network, agreeing to not attempt to exploit the network access to circumvent any filters or monitoring, and so on would need to be crafted, with penalties for misuse enshrined in the documentation. It's one thing to stumble on a security hole and report it appropriately; it's something else to abuse it for a year and sell access to it.

But Why, Though?

Why should an individual in prison have access to University of the People?
Because we are people first.
Because this provides us an opportunity to overcome the things that held us down.
Because we want to help you tear down the Build-a-Monster Warehouses that are strewn across the states, and teaching us something provides the wrecking balls that are sorely needed to tear down these places.
Because it's a better way to be tough on crime than simply meat warehouses and feckless LWOP sentencing.
Because it helps to build better neighbors out of those of us who get to leave prison at the end of our sentence.

For now, I can but wish for these changes as I look out my slit window one night.